WHAT COMES TO MIND - see also my site
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Saturday, August 4, 2012

Addictions

Possible addictions which may not be at all (See Positive Addiction by William Glaser, MD)

Sugar

Stories, tv, news, new facts and insights

Meditation, prayer

Breathing

Eating

Excitement

Exercise

One man's meat is another man's poison. One man's Mede is another man's Persian. One man's addiction is another man's hobby. If your teenager spends more time on his computer or cellphone that you would or than you would like, he is addicted. He has an addiction. Something must be done! However, if you do so more than your wife likes, she has got to learn to give you a little space!Is it an addiction? A profession? A hobby? More than one?I am reading over Stanton Peele's work on addictions and I intend to get to The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.(The underlined sentence above is a line in one of Odgen Nash's poems but I can't find it to quote it. He wrote tons of wonderful poems, full of lovely ideas and bearing titles worth quoting in themselves. It bugs me that so many of his poems are not to be found. I did find this poem on the way having a sense of humor puts things into perspective, perhaps to the disadvantage of the possessor of that sense.) This poem is on the web, here:http://www.unz.org/Pub/NashOgden-1938-00039DON'T GRIN, OR YOU'LL HAVE TOBEAR ITIt is better in the long run to possess an abscess or atumorThan to possess a sense of humor.People who have senses of humor have a very good time.But they never accomplish anything of note, eitherdespicable or sublime,Because how can anybody accomplish anything immortalWhen they realize they look pretty funny doing it andhave to stop to chortle?Everybody admits that Michelangelo's little things inthe Sistine Chapel are so immortal they have everybodyreeling.But I'll bet he could never have dashed them off if hehad realized how undignified he looked lying upthere with his stomach on the ceiling.Do you think Der Fuhrer could keep on being DerFuhrerIt he saw what everybody else sees every time he looksin the muhrer?Yes, fatal handicaps in life are fortunately few.But the most fatal of all is the faculty of seeing the otherperson's point of view.And if your devoted mother suggests that you will someday be rich and famous, why perish the suggestion;That is, perish it if you are afflicted with the suspicionthat there are two sides to every question.Good gracious, how could anybody corner wheatli they were sissy enough to reflect that they were causinga lot of other people to be unable to affordto eat?Look at mayors and congressmen and presidents, alwaysexcepting college presidents, such as Harvard'sConant;Do you think they could get elected ii they admittedeven to themselves that there was anything to besaid for their opponent?No, no, genius won't get you as far as common everydayfacilityUnless it is accompanied by a conviction of infallibility,And people who have a sense of humor are extremelygullible.But not enough so, alas, to believe that they are infullible.